Aid workers accused of taking part on 7/10 attack on Israel - appalling !

@Kindatired Not a problem :)

Sorry finger fumble

I don’t condone anyone’s violence.
Things don’t happen in a vacuum.
What the IDF are doing in Gaza is terrifying. It wouldn’t have happened without 7/10.
7/10 wouldn’t have happened without Palestinians feeling violated themselves. Can’t condone either really.

This is bit of thread derail but I found your use of saying this wasn’t “normal criminality” also doesn’t capture that these aren’t ordinary circumstances.

@Polka83

"How many people live in a place where they are subject to occupation, apartheid and indiscriminate killing and conviction? This is not a normal place to live for Palestinians in particular."

Just so I understand your point correctly, given the above are you saying that it's not surprising then that some become terrorists?

Yes, I think halting funding during a humanitarian crisis when there was no alternative to get humanitarian aid to these civilians- mostly innocent families was the wrong decision for the U.K. and others to make. I am no expert, but it seems to me to be collective punishment? That is causing deaths of children and elderly from starvation, and deaths of all age groups from lack of medical care from injuries caused by the war.

I think of the Met, would we stand down and tell all police officers in London they are sacked because of Wayne Couzens and David Carrick while investigating them and then others? Stop all policing until we know the Met has zero sex offenders on the force? All platitudes that it would be for our safety to ensure no more serial rapists and murderers prowling London in the uniform of a police officer, would be shown to be silliness as with zero police enforcing law and order in London, criminals would quickly take advantage and chaos would erupt and many innocents would die or be injured or robbed because of this.

It isn’t the right, ethical response to the problem.

“Out of any random 12,000 people you find thieves, wife beaters , child abusers, thugs of all descriptions.”

@Kindatired this is an excellent observation. 12,000 employees in UNRWA, is approximately the same size as the London Metropolitan police force which had Wayne Couzens on it who kidnapped, raped and brutally murdered Sarah Everard in a premeditated and planned attack. The same police force with David Carrick who plead guilty to 24 counts of rape early last year. In total, there have been 119 convictions out of 600 reports of sexual violence by Metropolitan police officers. Yet we don’t call the Met the arm of a sex trafficking gang do we? We recognise that within any organisation that large, there will be some of the worst, most violent criminals hiding within it.

For Israel to prove their allegation that UNRWA is an arm of Hamas with at least 10% of employees being Hamas terrorists, I would expect a lot more evidence. At least enough to convict 100 employees beyond any reasonable doubt.

So far, Israel has not presented anything near sufficient evidence to show their vetting system is poor, and certainly nothing to indicate that UNRWA is an arm of Hamas and should be disbanded.

Editing to add that terrorism is a crime. It isn’t a minor crime like shoplifting or kicking a dog, it ranks among the worst of crimes along with serial killers, serial rapists and child abusers.

@Kindatired just checking were you meant to @ me?

Out of any random 12,000 people you find thieves, wife beaters , child abusers, thugs of all descriptions.In addition, if there is a political void that fosters a terrorist agenda you will get people joining terrorist groups and find every shade of terrorist brutality- intimidation of locals, carjacking, extortion, drug, knee-capping, beatings, suicide bombs and sexual violence.
What pre employment screening do think would prevent recruitment of these individuals @anotherlevel ?
Are line managers responsible for monitoring the out of hours activities of their direct reports?
Can you sack a person because you suspect their brother in law or other family member is a bit dodgy?
Or would you prefer to see UNWRA disbanded and let the Israeli government take over its role?

How many people live in a place where they are subject to occupation, apartheid and indiscriminate killing and conviction? This is not a normal place to live for Palestinians in particular.

@Dulra

Did you actually read my post, which covers 3 points - I'll restate it if it helps:

1. I totally agree that it has yet to be proven true which in any event will be extremely difficult to do one way or the other given that a number of them are already dead.

2. However this is different to the point that @Kindatired was making, which was that out of 12,000 staff it wouldn't be surprising if it was true.

3. My objection is with the use of the phrase "being involved in criminal activity" to describe being a member of a brutal terrorist organisation .

This has been covered over and over. There is an independent investigation ongoing to find out the extent of what happened and who was involved. UNWRA immediately dismissed the people identified by Israel, without proof. The majority of posters on this thread from the beginning welcomed that but questioned the decision by many counties to defund the organisation at a time when people were starving to death. The situation was bad back then and now it is catastrophic, with 50% of children in Gaza now malnourished (up 49% since before October) and children dying daily of starvation. This is what most posters were angry about and it is welcome to see some countries starting to reinstate the aid because it has become clear Israel are incapable of delivering it safely to the people that need it.

@EasterIssland

"Which yet hasn’t been proven to be true"

I totally agree that it has yet to be proven true which in any event will be extremely difficult to do one way or the other given that a number of them are already dead.

However this is different to the point that @Kindatired was making, which was that out of 12,000 staff it wouldn't be surprising if it was true.

My objection is with the use of the phrase "being involved in criminal activity" to describe being a member of a brutal terrorist organisation .

This is not about a bit of dealing weed or car theft or even street robbery- it's about being part of a terrorist organisation that killed 1,200 people including women and children and then kidnapped 240 more.

Personally I would describe this as bit more than simply "being involved in criminal activity " and to do so is a disgusting and deliberate attempt to minimise the horrific events of 7th October.

we are talking about being part of a brutal terrorist organisation

Which yet hasn’t been proven to be true

@Kindatired

"If we took any group of 12,000 public servants and looked at what they were doing in their off duty private life, it is likely that some would be engaging in criminal activities."

+++

I agree that out of 12,000 public servants some would be engaged in criminal activities but FFS we are talking about being part of a brutal terrorist organisation here not just "criminal activity".

@qunari yes - apologies if that isn’t what you meant by you question

Is that directed at me? 😕

I took you question at face value - apologies

And that justifies posting a horrible anti-Semitic document does it?

There is a very credible documentary of interviews with elderly Jewish men describing having committed acts like this during the Nakbar.

I mean, there is a lot of illegible writing by a photo of what appears to be the wall of a history classroom. The school could be teaching the horrors of the Holocaust and Nazi invasion of Palestine in 1942 to the children. I’d like to see more info than a blurry page of an unknown book with a photo.

That's quite sick, do you actually believe any of that?

The evidence is irrefutable, but the context that goes along with the video is an unknown.

We see two men picking up one shot man out of three lying on the ground. One man is allegedly identified as an UNWRA worker(deceased on 10/7) and another man(deceased on 10/7) is unidentified but armed with a rifle. A blanket is spread in the back of a small SUV, they put the one shot man in the back on the blanket and then take one hat and one phone from the ground. The video ends with them driving a few metres away out of camera view- destination and direction unknown.

That is the evidence. What we do not know is

• Was Jonathon dead or injured when he was put in the back of the truck?
• Was one of the two men definitely the UNWRA worker they think?
• Was the unidentified armed man a terrorist or local Israeli with his own personal weapon?
• Where were they taking Jonathon? Towards Gaza? Or towards a hospital?
• Was this an attempted rescue or a kidnapping?
• If Jonathon was already dead, and it was a kidnapping attempt of a dead body, then why leave behind the other two bodies? There was room in the back of the truck for all three bodies.
• If the grabbing of one phone and one hat was thievery then why leave behind the other phones and valuables?

Everyone in the video died on 10/7, so it is not an easy thing to investigate. Until it is fully investigated, the video only supports that they were there and they took an injured man, dead or alive, away from the scene. It will take more investigation to establish the why they were there and what their intentions were.

People seem to forget that some of the victims of 7/10 were not Jewish, but were Israeli Muslim Bedouins, Israeli Christians and foreign nationals of other religions as were some of the heroes of 7/10 that rescued victims and risked their lives to fend off the terrorists. We cannot assume that Muslim on the scene = terrorist. One of the two infants (under age 1) killed by Hamas on 7/10 was a Muslim baby girl. The IDF has Israeli muslim soldiers serving in its ranks.

It's not just one. I'm referring to the PP's specific comment.

@stomachameleon
1982?..
Sure if we’re going back 4 decades, why don’t you borrow a copy of “Jewish Atrocities in the Holy Land “ in the interests of balence
https://www.loc.gov/rr/amed/pdf/palestine4/Jewish-Atrocities-in-the-Holy-Land.pdf

If we took any group of 12,000 public servants and looked at what they were doing in their off duty private life, it is likely that some would be engaging in criminal activities.

Since its foundation Israel has failed to make peace and progressively encroached on the agreed boundaries over and over for decades. It will always have a terrorist problem that is largely of its own making and this is regardless of who is running the Palestinian Territories , UNWRA or not. If you keep taking land you’ll have terrorists and regardless what day jobs they have.

Israel is coming back with more allegations now to deflect from the fact that it is responsible for starving children to death. It’s 4 months since the attacks and drip drip, claim after claim, with minimal evidence, to support the claims. This brief bit of footage the best they can do to justify mass punishment by starvation.